Our lesbian group has been banned from Pride. An overview:

We encourage visitors to the site to read our ‘about us‘ before reading this post. We are a group of lesbians in NZ who want to create positive pro-lesbian spaces and politics.

It’s Pride Month in Wellington and as a part of that Out Wellington Inc. hosts a fair called Out in the Park.

We had our place at the fair confirmed in early February so we’ve been planning on attending for some time. We were excited to go along and show that it’s okay to be a lesbian and proud, but instead we’ve been banned because our kaupapa is not “inclusive” enough.

Festival directors Drew Hadwen and Karen Harris emailed us seemingly out of the blue rescinding our stall and invoice. They said that because they “welcome all people, groups and organisations who want to join with us to celebrate the amazing diversity and creativity in our LGBTIQ+ community” they can not have our lesbian feminist stall or “presence” at Out Wellington Inc. organised events.

We have written to Wellington City Council Mayor Justin Lester asking for a meeting to discuss whether he supports City Council funding going towards events that discriminate against lesbian groups.It’s unclear whether the email and public comments telling us our presence is “not allowed” are supposed to serve as a trespass or warning. We have emailed Out Wellington Inc. to clarify whether we are (or might be) trespassed from Out in the Park for simply showing up. They have yet to reply.

Our group was honest and transparent in our application. We applied with our names, as The Lesbian Rights Alliance Aotearoa and said we are “a new and growing lesbian group and we are starting to expand our events and social activities in Wellington.”

Our application was accepted and our attendance at the event was publicly announced on the Out in the Park Facebook page.

Our kaupapa has been publicly available online since 6 June 2018.

The Police, Corrections and Young Nats will all have stalls at the event.

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Can’t believe this happened. Excluded for not being “inclusive”, your kaupapa makes it very clear you’re a group for women who are lesbians. There should be nothing wrong with that.
I fully support your right to have a female only group. There is nothing hateful about it in my opinion.
Maybe the GBTQs need to check their bigotry and stop bullying the Ls.

I am a straight guy, and I know that your organisation isn’t for me. By Lesbians for Lesbians is exclusionary by definition. I don’t seek to impose myself on you, I respect your right to be exclusionary of non Lesbians.

We can strive for equal rights for all, but we cannot make every group inclusive without destroying the value and benefit of those groups.

Women have had to fight so hard to get to where they are today, and the fight is far from over. I am a feminist. I have a Lesbian step daughter who is as dear to me as my natural daughter. I have a gay grandson who is loved no less than my other grandsons. But while I would expect you to welcome Jo in to your organisation I would not expect you to accept Jordie.

Solidarity from across the world in the UK. I’m a straight woman who knows that your group would not and should not include people like me if it is to stay true to its purpose. Wishing you strength and courage as you fight for your rights to be who you are.

Stay strong sisters. I’m an ancient bi woman who has always stood behind/with lesbians. This crap going on is fracking unbelievable. Myself and many other women of mixed sexualities marched in the Vancouver Dyke March.The hate and harassment was a shock to my entire system. Then we found out we were banned!

I can’t stomach what’s going on against lesbians by these cruel and lesbophobic men who claim to be lesbians/women. Do they honestly think that any lesbian will accept their disgusting male bodies? Boggles the mind.

Good news: right around International Day of Lesbian Visibility, a new stencil appeared on the main shopping street near here (I hope as a late reaction to all the stencils saying ‘trans power’ and ‘sex work is work’): RESIST LESBIAN ERASURE. I felt better all day just seeing that.

It is sad that now Vancouver has become Transcouver and Canada really is TransCanada. ARGH.